The Final Day: RAID Complete

We awoke on the final day of the Raid knowing that the hard work was in the bag, and the official results were decided. The riders spent most of the morning arguing about who had snatched the coveted yellow jersey, who was king of the mountains, and Dad was insisting he was a shoe-in for the 'young rider' accolade. The one thing that everyone agreed on was that the final stage, like in the Tour de France, would be a non competitive precession into our equivalent of the Champs-Elysees: St Cyprien beach.

Day 11: The Final Col Down

Four ghostly shadows danced around the lounge of the Gite at 4:30 in the morning. Tom had set his alarm to wake Greg who wanted to set up a time lapse sequence on the GoPro to catch the sunrise over the mountains. Team Leader had set his alarm to make sure Tom was awake to wake Greg – and with so much going on Mike had got up just to join in the fun. The quick and uncharacteristic flurry of nocturnal activity was soon over, and the team retired to their beds once again for much needed sleep – except Tom who spent a tortured few hours thinking up stories for the blog to try to explain away Dad's unexpected stage win from the previous day.

Day 10: The Tortoise and Marmere

Our morning ride as usual was croissant and coffee fuelled, and after a slight navigational mishap we turned 90 degrees and went back through the town, which was fortunate as it was really attractive and for the first time in a while, drenched in sunlight.

Leaving the town was a mistake as we were instantly into punishingly hilly terrain. We had now started thinking solely in gradients, even in day to day civilian life, and this landscape was throwing unimpressive sounding figures like 9% at us. That's bad news for a cyclist. At least we could console ourselves that the steep gradients meant that we were already on the col. This pleasant illusion was soon shattered as we passed the official 'col' start sight some ten kms of hills later.

Day 9: Incidental Gains

Mike's night of much needed rest hadn't got off to a textbook start, but the pizza trauma wasn't the end of his woes: as soon as he'd banished the image of the bloated swirling dough from his mind and began to drift off, Tom started snoring. Tom woke up the following morning refreshed and ready to attack the day, joined several hours later by Mike, bloodshot and unable to move.